Pennfield Ice Cream and Coffee
956 Capital Avenue NEIt has been a while since we took a trip to the zoo.
We’ve been members at Binder Park Zoo for several years. We usually do a few trips to the zoo in Newton Township and take advantage of the reciprocal membership by doing one big zoo trip every summer.
COVID stopped both of those. We didn’t go to Binder Park at all last year nor did we do a big zoo trip.
This past summer, the only zoo trip we did was Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago….which is free, so we didn’t need our membership.
We still hadn’t been to Binder Park Zoo since 2019 and I kind of missed it. The hours are not great right now. They close at 4:00 so that makes it a little harder to get over there after soccer gets over around 12:30.
We decided to just go. It doesn’t cost us anything so even if we only get to spend 2 1/2 hours there, it will be nice to get out of the house and walk around the zoo.
We pushed it right up to the 4:00 closing time. We had to get over to the Bears and the Snow Leopard and it was 3:55. We got our last two animals in then headed for the exit a little stressed from trying to get everything in such a short amount of time but ultimately glad we made the trip over.
The kids were….eh…ok. Not great. Still, we limited the whining by offering ice cream. They could have whined less but they whined less enough we took them for ice cream.
There aren’t a lot of ice cream places still open right now. Most closed after Labor Day. My search kept bringing back to one place that still has a month or so left in their season.
Pennfield Ice Cream & Coffee is on Capital Avenue Northeast south of Montford Street in Calhoun County’s Pennfield Township. The shop is a standalone restaurant right off the very busy Capital Avenue. The building was Fogg Motors in a former life but was converted in to an ice cream and coffee shop just before COVID hit last year.
Pennfield Ice Cream & Coffee is a pretty large restaurant. There’s a long order counter in the back of the room. One side is for ice cream. The other side is for coffee. Of course, we headed straight for the ice cream side.
The shop serves Ashby’s Ice Cream and they have a lot of flavors. There’s a milk crate at the counter for little kids to stand on. We grabbed it for B and he pressed his face to the glass looking for his favorite…Superman.
We got him a single scoop of Superman in a dish. I’m not sure what they do different but the ice cream was pretty soft which really helped B eat it. I knew he wouldn’t eat it all himself so I didn’t order anything myself since I was planning on just finishing whatever he didn’t eat. Really though, you can’t go wrong with Superman ice cream. The colors alone make it interesting to B but the flavors, lemon, strawberry, and bubblegum don’t hurt.
L chose the waffle cone like she always does. What surprised me is she chose Pumpkin Pie Supreme ice cream as one of her choices. This ice cream is pumpkin pie spice ice cream with pie crust pieces and whipped cream mixed in. Not my thing but I don’t like Pumpkin Pie. L apparently does. She also got Anniversary Cake which is a yellow cake batter ice cream with cake bites and frosting mixed in. The guy scooping ice cream handed her a bowl in case the ice cream got to soft…which it did. After a few explanations of what she should be doing, she finally turned the ice cream upside down in the bowl and broke the cone in to pieces to eat the rest of it.
J did something similar to L but she got a Waffle Bowl instead of a cone. She also picked the Anniversary Cake as one of her flavors. The other was…I forgot to write it down or take a picture..which usually happens at ice cream shops. The waffle bowl was a really good idea though. She got all the waffle of a cone but with a lot less of the mess.
We haven’t really sat down to eat at many places with the kids but there is a really large dining area and it was pretty empty when we got there so B and I went to find a booth while L and J were ordering. There are several TV’s hanging on the walls but none of them were showing a Michigan based football team while we were in there.
Our cost was just a little over $15 for the three ice cream treats. I didn’t get one of my own because I know by now how this goes. I ate some of B’s and some of L’s. It was plenty for me. I didn’t have to add their leftover on top of my own dish.
Pennfield Ice Cream & Coffee is a pretty solid ice cream shop. They have the advantage of actually having indoor seating so they can stay open later in the year. They do have some picnic tables outside but we never considered eating out there. The store is way to close to the road and Capital is a very busy street. The street noise alone is enough to make it unenjoyable let alone worrying about the 5 year old running in to traffic.
The lack of outside space really isn’t an issue though because inside is super comfortable. It’s a nice big space with lots of ice cream to choose from. What’s not to like?
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